i used to think you just wanted to warm your hands
but i realized you really do want to watch the world burn instead
what an awful way to have wasted all the love i had

don't talk to me about addiction
when you can still brush your teeth sober
act like you're too troubled to be a friend to me
when you're getting high, you just dont care

when you call, i get that feeling
like i just finished sobbing
choked up and dried out and exhausted
i get drunk and want to talk to you anyways

this is not about me being angry
this is not about how i used to see us
naked at the west end of humanity
the last two living souls, me and you,
naked in the wreckage of the world,
the opposite adam and eve

i should've understood sooner
that there's nothing romantic
about being the villian, no matter
how very much in love you are

this is about me, asking you to let me tell you
about the times i almost jumped off mountains
and then let me tell you why i didn't

there's more to being human
than embracing the mistakes you make
building a home out of apologies and
"i've been ****** up"s and
"you don't deserve this" -
when they tell you that it's okay
because you're only human,
they're reminding you to embrace
not only the bad, but the good too

i'm fine when i can feel someone next to me
when my words lazily roll off my tongue and into heavy air
when someone's subtle and quiet gestures suggest
that i am somebody they like to be around
i'm fine when the world feels warm
from the love that swarms in and all around it

it's the spaces between that get me
the 53 seconds of time it took between
my thumb pressing the "send" button and the reply
hearing the laughter coming from the other room,
but not the joke preceding it
eating cheap dinner alone in my bedroom
while watching my favorite 90's sitcom

these gaps, these pauses, they are the ugliest parts of me
there is not a second of these moments that go by
that i am not wishing for a reassurance, a validation
a reminder that i am heard and noticed and loved
and that i have a purpose here, and reasons to stay

i need to be reminded that i have reasons to stay

the sun in me must be heavy
because waking up is getting harder
i am practicing for the real thing
if we're being honest, i don't
want to see my 17th birthday
because since somewhere after
my 13th one, i have been restrained,
arms behind my back, while he
sucker-punched me in the jaw
i have spent the last 4 years
spitting blood and teeth onto the cement
and saying "thank you, thank you,
this is all i could ever want."

The fading sunset and the moon cry
for their spot in the sky
Yet they still lack what I see in your eyes.

Dear reader,
I have a request for you
Judge not
Hate not
Don't tear up the pages
If you dislike my poetry
I ask that you do not scream
Simply put the book aside
Forget everything
I will not be hurt
Unless you outright say
That you hate my poetry
Forever from this day
So, dear reader, please
Heed my request
And I will not hate you
For hating what I write
Sincerely,
The Writer

When I woke up,
my fish was dead.
His eyes were dull,
and his soul had fled.
I didn't wonder, I didn't cry,
I didn't sit and wonder why
Why did that dumb fish
have to die?

He will not swim
Nor does he float
Instead he sits
like a sunken boat
It seems that belly-up
is not true
He dies just the same
as me and you

In the night air, of ghostly moon
starry the darkened blues, quiver
some falling from the sky to startle
under murmuring trees, we rest
and never sleep, we seek to know
what night will conjure
strange drunken allure
of the celestial

Planetary fools
entranced by moons
magnetically pulled
ebbed and fallen
just another day, we lay
soon swallowed by
the sun